04 October 2011

Geo-engineering

The New York Times is reporting that the D.C.-based Bipartiscan Policy Center is releasing a new study developed by an 18-member panel of researchers and policy wonks calling for research on ways to cool the planet down through geo-engineering, or as they prefer to call it, climate remediation. From the Times:

In fact, it is an idea that many environmental groups have rejected as misguided and potentially dangerous....

I'm open to geo-engineering if it is done in using incremental methods, but it does strike me as hubristic. Of course the certainty with with many climatologists pronounce about the future of the world seems similarly intellectually arrogant. I'm not sure how you accept the latter as justified, but label study of the former as dangerously prideful. If scientists really understand the climate as well as I am so often told they do, why wouldn't engineers be able to take that understanding and put it to use?

Last week, various environmental activist groups urged the British government to stop a minor experiment in which British researchers plan to hoist a hose via helium ballons into the air and spew out water droplets.

I'm sorry, I thought the AGW movement was 100% congruent with being pro-science. Apparently it is "pro-science" to block experiments now? Or perhaps it's not as simple as "this side supports Science and the other side hates Science."

I continue to believe that most of the support behind the AGW movement is less about concern for the environment than it is about gaining leverage to tell other people -- especially ones who consume or produce the wrong things -- what to do. It's the simplest explanation I can think of which explains this situation.

1 comment:

I agree that geoengineering (humans consciously controlling the earth's environment) is hubristic. This includes the form of geoengineering currently favored by most current environmentalists, i.e. Political-Economic Restriction Of Carbon Dioxide Emission.

It's true that the AGW movement is motivated more by power than by genuine concern for the environment, and the fact that they pretend their preferred geoengineering method isn't geoengineering is one illustration of this.